excerpts

Bridgette comes from Bromley in Kent. She studied Social Anthropology and psychology at Sussex University, then took a further Diploma in Psychology at the University of London. She enjoys psychology, which stimulated her interest in creativity, self-actualisation, transcendence in the individual and the therapeutic role of art, music and literature. She worked as nurse for one year, then began teaching psychology as a private tutor, and for one year lectured at Norwich City College before moving to Cornwall. She also studied art for one year at the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design.

From these experiences sprung a series of romantic stories using a unique combination of themes from anthropology, art and psychology. She is also interested in the gothic genre and has added these themes to her book to add atmosphere, and because the imagination can conjure up visual imagery and sublime themes, which evolve within this framework. Throughout her stories, she focuses on romanticism, aesthetics and the sublime.

The combination of all these experiences has resulted in Black Dove, a gothic romantic story, completed while she was researching local Penwith artists for a book by Hypatia Trust – a women’s literature archive in Penzance, a Penwith artists’ dictionary, where she gained insight into the personal lives, revelations, and inspirations of many Cornish and national artists. She has chosen Sennen in Cornwall for its outstanding beauty, natural wild landscapes, turbulent sea and stunning sunsets, seeing it as nature’s palate with every hue and shade coming alive and swirling across the horizon. She loves anything to do with the sea and has begun surfing.

After studying the lives of many artists, she uses ideas taken from aspects of their lives, inspirations and psyches, artists such as Robert Lenkiewicz, Kurt Jackson. Paul Williams, Ithell Colquhoun, and the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly the Romantics, naturalists and surrealists. She has particular interest in women as the artist’s muse. She has also explored some of the local history, including the hauntings of Sennen, said to be the most haunted part of England; hence the book also has paranormal, occult and spiritual themes. She has studied a creative writing course at UEA with Ashley Stokes and Laura Fish, as well as attending creative writing courses in London. She is currently researching her second book entitled Flight of Doves, featuring four stories, one using elements of the local mythological Isle of Lyonesse.

She has one son called Justin.